Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/52

26 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, The young lawyer of literary ability who in his days of light practice appears too conspicuously as a writer lessens his chances professionally. The financial returns from writing a law treatise, even one that is well received, are surprisingly small. The likelier result of such a book is that it may win the author a good salary with some prominent firm, or, if his youth is not too glaring, will bring him fees as counsel or brief-maker in his specialty. The rural districts send some better-class lawyers to our legis- lature ; but this city quite invariably uses for that purpose only the poorer stuff at our bar. At times — about once in a quarter of a century — there is an uprising o-f decent citizens against our cor- rupt municipal rule. Then young attorneys shine forth as reform- ers. But for them the success of Reform does little else than set their altruism in a strong light. The present Reform Mayor, in June last, found more than three hundred and fifty of them anxious to sit in the fourteen judicial places then at his disposal. Thus it appears that the competition of beginners inter se in the profession and in its collateral activities is now very strong. But though this is the mildest factor in the entire competition that exists here, the younger generation are undaunted. As Mr. Joseph H. Choate ex- pressed it at the Langdell celebration, Mr. Carter will soon retire, and a thousand young men are coming to take his place. Thus almost ideal opportunity will be offered to the merciless law of the survival of the fittest. New comers may take heart on learning that the best of our lawyers have come through hard — in some cases very hard — beginnings; that the best of our lawyers are and consistently have been lawyers simply, and attend to col- lateral matters of public concern merely as duties incident to their professional success; that merely by surviving, by continuing on hand at one's office, — not necessarily in mere idleness, — there is always a chance that business will begin; that business well done breeds business ; and the strange fact that this city not only allures but she consumes. Old New Yorkers are a trivial minority of the population. Everybody of present consequence here, including the leaders at our bar, came from somewhere else. There are no hereditary or family law firms. The son of a distinguished dead or retired father may be brevetted into the firm merely for the name's sake. .Very probably ninety per cent of the rank and file of the bar are immigrants to this city; and the concentration at this point is so strong that we regard even Brooklyn as provincial. Many lawyers come to this city because they aspire to be simply